Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Featuring: WIM-images and Diskpart

When I first bought my netbook from Acer it came with the  Windows 7 Starter Edition. Luckily for me I had an extra Home Premium license I could use. Problem was that the graphics driver needed was not available for download, and was not available through Windows. A fact I only discovered once I had re-installed windows. Another irritating thing I discovered was that the bundled software that was pre-installed with my windows starter edition, did not run anymore.

The solution? The hidden recovery partition.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this guest post, James Ricketts discusses how to troubleshoot computer problems related to internet issues. Find out more about James at the end of this post.

Today, we rely on the Internet to carry out various functions and it is no fun when your web browser, such as Internet Explorer, develops an error and fails to load. In this article, we will discuss how to resolve common errors associated with Internet Explorer as well as the following topics:

• How to remove additional toolbars from Internet Explorer, such as the yahoo toolbar.
• How to resolve system error 5
• Essential PC maintenance activities that every Windows user should perform to prevent common Windows errors and issues from occurring.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are many ways to shut down and restart your computer, but – which does what, and which should you use when?

The answer depends mostly on you. Are you into saving energy or boot-up time? How often do you leave your computer and for how long?

There are three main shut-down options available in Windows: Shut-Down, Sleep and Hibernate (names may vary depending on the Windows version). In Vista and Windows 7, there is also a fourth option; Hybrid Sleep.

Let’s explore the topic.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this guest post, Tibor Schiemann, President and Managing Partner of TuneUp discusses how to restore lost data and repair damaged file. Find out more about Tibor at the end of this post.

Have you ever accidentally deleted the wrong photo? Or emptied the Recycle Bin and not realized that an important folder was in it? Unfortunately, it only takes a single mouse-click to lose a file.

So, what is the best way to go about restoring this lost data? It’s important to avoid write operations on the hard disk or flash drive inup anymore.question—if you can. Deleted files are never actually erased or destroyed; only the “pointer” to that specific file is gone, so it will not show

The good news is that the data will remain intact. The bad news, however, is that the Windows file system will mark the file as “overwriteable”. What this means is that the physical space used to store the deleted file is now designated as free space, where new programs can be installed, new files can be saved, or new data can be created. The accidentally deleted file will most likely be fully or partially overwritten, and in the latter case, it will be damaged.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once in a while, one of your applications will lock up and you would have to kill it (in the good sense of the word). Of course this will cause you to lose any unsaved data. At least you will learn to save your work more often, right?

But wait, there is something you may try first … before shutting it down “ungracefully”…

Using RESMON

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I asked iTunes to organize my music directory (getting music from different sources other than just the iTunes store left it a little messy and I decided I’d let iTunes do its thing) and it did a great job; however, it left a bunch of empty directories. Although these empty directories didn’t pose any performance impact, they just looked… messy and I decided I’d delete them. I started doing this one by one and soon realized I had over 50 empty directories and sub directories. Being lazy, I decided to run a command to remove these directories. I’ve done this a lot in Linux so I figured it was easy; well, not quite, but it’s also not that hard. In this guide, I’ll show you what I did and hope you can find this useful in some way.

Read the rest of this entry »